


Fidelis

by SouthernBird



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Castlevaniaesque, Collaboration AU, Holy!Lance, Hunter AU, Hunter!Shiro, Implied Violence, M/M, Monsters/Demons AU, Religious Conflict, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Shance Zine 2018, Shiro is in love with a man of God, Violence, Zine Submission, and it's painful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-23 05:13:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13780455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthernBird/pseuds/SouthernBird
Summary: [Submission for Shance Zine 2017]-The moment their eyes met, the hunter felt an ache in his palms and in his feet, the nails through his skin to crush at the bones and pin him tight to his cross. Sinful, he is sure, but there are more nights he has imagined the body beneath those robes than he would like to admit.





	Fidelis

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a hot minute since I have posted a story, and unfortunately, the Shance Zine dissolved due to life being horribly busy and unrelenting. I did this piece in collaboration with Enderkichi (also known as [Skylocked](http://skylocked.tumblr.com/)) which can be found [here](https://twitter.com/enderkichi/status/967153701394661376) (personally I am not sure how to post pictures into stories yet, but I also have not discussed in full how to come about that with Sky, so a link it shall stay)! Yes, it's horribly influenced by Castlevania, but hey, it's valid. I hope.

In the snowdrifts that dust over the shadows of looming empty houses, there resounds in the winter air a toll of bells from the belfry of a dilapidated lone chapel, a once sanctuary depicting the canonical grandeur of Archangels and Martyrs in the beauties of painted glass that now is a cesspool of false prayers and empty pews. 

 

There are no people here. 

 

There is no bustle of marketplace quibbles and no antics of sinners needing a Providence to guide, no, not any that wish to show their countenances to the frigid elements of winter’s bone-chilling ache, and not especially when the only warm bodies traveling the stone roads are a hunter and a once Holy man. To think of them here in the call of frigid nothingness, one a man that watched his family be torn away from the fangs of a demon of the night, and the other who clings to the robes and to the scriptures in desperate hope that the burning sin he feels will finally fade away. 

 

What shambles they are in, having lost the rest of their comrades, a duo of beasts alongside a scholar too young to be out on her own. Shiro, a hunter with more grip on the ways of killing the demonic and the beastial with less of a belief in anything religious, finds himself with a dismal prayer towards the spire of the cathedral’s umbra looming in the snow fog. Surely, if there is a God, he will impart His kind hand so that Keith, Hunk, and Pidge will have found a little cove of safety against the winds together. Whiteout be damned, at least with their largest companion being a reformed werewolf, Hunk has kept the scents of the other two in memory for the urgency that arises to scurry the others out of the winds and to use his furs to impart some warmth.

 

But, still, there is a demon that prowls, a festering plague that has ripped away the innocence of this town with preying claws and bloodied fangs. With winter as a veil, there lies in the gray winds a hungry predator that watches the children and the sickly from the darker corners in alleys of houses to note their helplessness before snatching its victims away. 

 

It is better to hunt while being bait, Shiro supposes, though the storm has died into drifting flurries and softer zephyrs, no longer like the howls of sinners that are surely burning in the proverbial hell that the younger man beside him must fear. It is a strange thing, he thinks, to breathe words of prayers into the laced fingers of hands to a God that would put Lance in a danger afoul, but would do so willingly in the hopes that he being guided down a path of righteous sacrifice. 

 

Yet, Lance is beautiful, more the epitome of a seraph than of a barely-man in too large robes with eyes that are bluer than the rare summer skies, that are deeper than any lake and any sea. Those eyes remind Shiro of dealing with priests in villages long past, an utterance with humbled assurance that God only burns forth the trials of life to forge a blade anew for strength of spirit.

 

If that is so, then Lance, with his grace and with his selflessness, with his love for God and for God’s children, so desperate to cling to their few coins to buy a starving child bread or to help a beaten woman with a few shillings to find a kind family to house her, is Shiro’s crux. 

 

The moment their eyes met, the hunter felt an ache in his palms and in his feet, the nails through his skin to crush at the bones and pin him tight to his cross. Sinful, he is sure, but there are more nights he has imagined the body beneath those robes than he would like to admit. 

 

Lance’s eyes linger too long on the features of others at times, and sheepishly he claims that he is merely an admirer of God’s beauty, seen in all people. There is a bile of jealously that pricks at Shiro’s throat, that simmers a fire of envious possession that is so greedy to believe that Lance might find him beautiful to see, too, but not for the sake of God, or any god for that matter. Pagan, Nordic, Celtic— since his right arm has been gilded with the warped blessings of holy men to smite the evils of hell through black fire of demonic intent, Shiro cares for none of the few encountered, but will swallow pride for Lance. 

 

Gods are meaningless immortals, either crazed by lust of different calibers, but they all die the same if their hoard believes that they are doing harm to humankind. 

 

Yet, he knows in the dark chambers of his heart, the ones he closed away with rolling dark torchlight and shaking bloodstained hands, that there is putrid ugliness that has decayed with the bodies that pile under Shiro’s boots. Those eyes will gaze upon his form, drenched in blood to the lasting inch, hollow judgment to always linger along the trails of his coat. He is their martyr with no reason for death, their general where there is no army to lead. 

 

There is a bleaker nature that blackens the souls of hunters, an upheaval of atonements that eventually grow cold and passionless each time an appeal for forgiveness is implored. Shiro recalls it was in the very confession box of Lance’s church that he gave up his last thread of care for his salvation for the moment he saw those blue eyes, wise yet naive all at once, he was lost, casted down a void of yearning that would surely have his soul writhing in hellfire. If not for his justice, if not for the lasting hope that he can turn tide of evil away from innocence, surely that might be all that saves him to instead be left to dull purgatory instead of the pit.

 

Lance walks beside him quietly to make each step as Shiro does, a pensive purse of his lips, those that Shiro would desperately press his own to were it the time to. There, though, in the fog that waltzes lazily in the dying winds of a failing storm, the hunter can see the beads of Lance’s rosary twined between his fingers, a damned memento of reminder of who truly possesses the heart of this holy man. 

 

Jealousy bites up Shiro’s throat, plainly seething.

 

Life for their little troop is nothing more than the dismal sights and the horrifying sounds, of stale ale in taverns and lumpy hay piles of barns. Despite their humble funds, Shiro attempts now and then to offer Lance a room in the inn, to let him know warmth and a bed since he is not only their holy man, capable of holy water and exorcisms, but also their healer, knowledgeable of herbs and medicines. For the betterment of his salvation squandered, the hunter presses aside his own sentiments of protection.  

 

“No,” Lance will always say, a smile so gracious on his lips that it’s saddening, “allow someone more deserving of the comfort.” 

 

None of the others take it since they all have their suspicions in concern to the matters of Shiro’s affections, so the coins stay in the bag, and they move on. 

 

He could ponder all day, mull over each interaction with his comrade all he want, but that would not do his business of slaying the malicious existences in their realm any good, so with a swallow, thick and reluctant, his eyes trail away from Lance to gaze back amongst the whites and grays of the village. 

 

As expected from a people with only a few pitchforks and axes to use for the sake of defense, the houses and market stalls are all boarded up or empty due to the danger that lurks around the corners and the blizzard that is now just a soft drift of snowflakes. Shiro’s eyes search each inch of the village before him, for anything that might indicate that their target it sniffing about for a meal or for an easy merciless kill. 

 

_Red._

 

Shiro settles into a stop, Lance right by him as the hunter stares down at the small drops of red that trail towards an alleyway near the church. There’s a pattern there, a dripping of droplets of life itself, of crimson bleeding out from what may be a poor victim that they haven’t found soon enough. 

 

Beside him, a susurrous of gentle words of grace and mercy passes through full lips, a sorrowful floating along the whispers that tempts the taller of them to settle his palm along the line of Lance’s shoulder to console. Victims are never truly well after encounters with the entities that belie in the darkness of alleys and forests, whether trauma will rattle their senses for the rest of their days, or their lives sanctified in the mind of at least one being of holy light. 

 

Lance is truly a gift, and though Shiro’s affection are untoward, that ebullient light within those blue eyes could never denounce him. It is with a soft smile, a comforting lift of corners of lips that eases them both before they begin the trek into the alley for the beast that haunts the snow mists before the shadows of the cathedral.

 

It does not take long, and Lance spots it first, the bent figure of a female over the innocent they were so desperate to save. 

 

“Stop!” is commanded from Shiro’s side before he can stealthily ease closer to gauge what they have found in the dark open ways of the village, but he cannot hold it against Lance, cannot fault him for the horror and the sorrow of his tone.

 

Again, they did not arrive in time. 

 

What Shiro assumed would be an easy hunt, some slaying of a beast that only knew of hunger or a demon to be chanted down by Lance’s beautiful and deadly prayers is suddenly drastically flipped. 

 

The hunter’s stomach churns with the bile of his anxiety profoundly awakened at the sight of a corpse like beauty with red staining her lips, Her eyes, blackened holes unseeing yet all-seeing, hold him firm where he stands. To add to the fear that prickles coldly along his nerves, she smirks, all fangs and tar. 

 

“Keledone…” Lance whispers, the terrible epiphany of what they are facing striking his own heart, evident in the tremors that shake his voice. The icy hand of what may be death is cold, spindly fingers with knuckles gnarled and white sink around his own chest—. 

 

She steps, her gait almost stiffly animated, as though her joints cannot bend, yet it is more horrifying than that of more humanlike motion as it makes her all the more unreal. 

 

God’s words and rites passed to mortal kind are of no help in the face of a keledone, a sullen mistress of ravenous song that seeks to wail for her prey to lure unknowing meals to satiate her appetite. Shiro cannot— will not— gaze upon her most recent victim, fully aware that Lance will handle the soul’s passage to heaven above, but it draws another worry while she lingers closer, feet shuffling trails of sanguine in the snow. 

 

Lance is entirely useless against her. 

 

Prayers are a beautiful mantra in ode to God and Saviors, Messiahs abound in words of shattering grace that are murmured against the fingers that have not known the spill of blood, demonic, beast, or human regardless. The hunter, in the very wake of evil itself, in the breath of darkness along his jaw and his neck, has done everything he can do to keep his holy man, this unknown keeper of his heart, innocent from the ways of dealing blows. 

 

The keledone, though, will not be easy, her skin tough as the metal forged by Hephaestus himself in the smithery of the gods and her tenacity imbued with the ferociousness that pales all others, but he has fell greater beasts than herself. He will do all that he can to keep the village, and by extension Lance, his loveliest companion, _safe,_ in whatever means that are at his disposal _._

 

His own life is a weapon, and he is aware of the temporary status of such, but for Lance, Shiro would gladly fell himself. 

 

In horrific prose, her song begins in stuttered hiccups of syllables, a tongue that is unknown to himself, but seems to strike Lance into a stillness that immobilizes him. Her eyeless sight suddenly jerks to the smaller of the two, a grin so proverbially hungry that Shiro nearly hesitates in the audacity of her power while her authority pins down her prey in vigorous prowess. Her disjointed mechanisms, unbeknownst to human knowledge, turn the holy man’s way. 

 

Fall, she must, quickly and assuredly, and Lance will not move, cannot move, her song, dripping with rotting ambrosia that will soon cauterize to bitter poison if he does not run away, and damn it all, does he not hear Shiro’s yells, his own rallying begs for Lance to _run, run, dammit?_

 

Keledone that she is, her existence alone frays the senses and removes all sensitivity to the factual. Danger is even in the air with the bitterness of copper hinted with rotten fruit, yet she is a sickly beauty, as pale as gossamer and as deadly as nightshade. Sirens would quiver in envy at her song, entrancing with a warped, off tune screech that has Lance in her sights, petrified not with nothing more than immobilizing dread. 

 

With her attention away from the man with an arm of metal dipped in demonic pools of darker intent, Shiro swiftly goes, rounding to her back and noting the nape of her neck, unprotected while she’s still reaching for the once priest-to-be. His position lowers, a bend of his knees and constriction of the muscles of his legs, readying himself to slice into that one failsafe with the claws of his glowing hand—. 

 

She cackles, mechanical and haughty, as though his attack were simply a child playing a game with her authority, and she easily tilts as her claws reach to take Lance’s chin, and then, rake down. Shiro’s blood goes utterly cold, frigid and still as everything freezes with the rest of the lands within winter’s tomb. 

 

His poor boy, the cynosure of his most protective adorations, of his most secretive and worrisome desires, does not take the slice of jagged metal down his torso through his robes. Lo, instead of horrified that Lance’s life would be ripped away, the shreds of tattered white swaying in the winter chill as Death rode upon his pale horse for a soul of pearl, the holy man procures a knife of golden hilt to stab the keledone in the temple— her only other spot of vulnerability. 

 

The keledone sputters out a howl, oily and disembodied, a voracious squelch of dying beast before she drops, lifeless as the body that was cast into her a spirit afoul with mechanic dissonance and copper bloodlust. 

 

Shiro stands there, seeing yet unseeing what his companion has done. Lance has withstood many panics, but to be brave, to let the monster come within that vulnerable breath of space that would fell so many other hunters far more experienced than Shiro— Shiro falls in love all over with this man though there is a certain rift that reeks rancid with these events as Lance has taken up a blade. 

 

The paleness, that sullen acceptance that drifts like a hiemal cloak of gloaming mist that comforts with solstices only of icy darkness, is so starkly piercing into his heart that he feels so strongly the urge to soothe that frown. His arm, once glowing with the pulses of the adrenaline and fear that pounded in his ears, dimly fades into that nothingness once more. 

 

With a soft shush, Shiro comes closer, cloak rustling behind him as he cups Lance’s jaw, thumbs tracing curves right below the dips of cheekbones— he is beautiful, a figment of marble that no sculptor could carve, a semblance of paint that no artist could muster. Even with the fickle thread of death now drenched in the sanguine tar of a monster with no soul, Lance is so ethereally sublime. 

 

Truly, Shiro realizes that the best motion of action is simply to ask upon the wellbeing of his companion, to hark a worrisome note of deference of his fears for the sake of Lance. Instead, he cannot imagine his own stupidity when he feels lips along his own, everything beneath his touch then stills with the austerity of shock. 

 

Lance does not jerk himself away appalled, but Shiro does, absolutely putrified with his sins. 

 

“I— Lance, I—,” but he cannot speak, any word of justification netted into his own pride’s cage, the ropes confining him to his failures of secrecy. He has kissed Lance, the very act that might would end them here, that would turn Lance away from him. 

 

In the alley where a corpse lays sightless and a monsters bleeds poison into the snow drifts, blue eyes that are muted sky lines of the valleys outside in the countryside, abide his gaze. When the holy man murmurs, it is interlaced with the hymns of sacrifice and with the screams of martyrs on the pyres. 

 

“But, it's against my vows to God, Shiro," Lance whispers in the breath of space between their lips, a broken chime of a sound that nearly makes Shiro's heart break. 

 

With disdain for the matters of higher beings and rites upheld, the rosary falls from soft fingers with a demeaning clatter along the cobblestone of the lonely alleyway as lips find his, and vows burn to ash and pyre smoke.


End file.
